Tart of Poached Seckel Pears With Frangipane Cream and Pomegranate Jelly Glaze
In late October, I drove up north to visit my daughter and her family in Santa Cruz. After lunching downtown one day, Dinah and I walked over to the Museum of Art and History. She led me to her favorite exhibit, which featured the daily life of Santa Cruz County from earliest times. We ambled through the centuries, dioramas crowded with tools, furniture, clothing, journals and keepsakes of each period. But when we reached “The Home Front: Santa Cruz County’s War Front During World War II,” I stood still.
There, lifted straight from my L.A. childhood, in a small kitchen that reminded me of my best friend’s mother’s, were food ration books and coupons, Victory Garden seed packets, gas rationing stickers and cupboards crowded with boxes of spices, sacks of grain, dried beans, dehydrated soup mixes and Mason jars brimming with home-canned green beans, cherries and rhubarb. The robin’s egg blue stove made my mouth water, with its long legs, stacked ovens, shelf for raising dough, trash burner and two warmers.
Driving home down Highway 101, signs heralded fruit stands with “Apples! Pears! Persimmons!,” and suddenly I was 9 years old in Jenny’s mother’s kitchen, baking cookies--persimmon cookies. In their garden, small lanterns of persimmons shone from a leafless tree. These were the first cookies I ever made, and I was mesmerized putting the dough together. (I’d long been my mother’s dinner party sous chef, peeling vegetables, tossing salads, stirring stews, but baking wasn’t one of her passions and so I’d never baked.)
First Jenny and I smooshed the fruit’s jellylike pulp with forks on a wooden board. Then in a deep bowl, we took turns using a stout spoon to beat and beat until the shortening and honey (sugar was rationed) turned fluffy. To this creamy mixture we plopped in an egg, dropped in the orange mash, dumped in a cloud of flour and whiff of cinnamon, scattered in raisins, stirred feverishly, then daintily pushed blobs off a spoon onto the baking sheets we’d greased with the flats of our hands. After a lifetime of waiting--15 minutes, I was frantic with the fragrance--we opened the oven door. I gasped. The pale blobs had metamorphosed into beautiful amber-gold cakes.
At Paso Robles I turned east. Reaching Interstate 5, the okra aroma of cotton fields was in my nose. A roadside sign touting “Pomegranates!” snapped my thoughts back to Jenny and me at the Eunice Knight Saunders School in Hollywood. Two old pomegranate trees graced the schoolyard. Every October even scrappy first-grade boys didn’t climb the trees lest the limbs break and the fruits be smashed, and even snooty fifth-grade girls didn’t wear good dresses lest they be splashed with scarlet. I remember the shock of the fruit’s first taste each autumn, sharp-sweet, deeply quenching, delicious. And what fun aiming shots of seeds at friends and enemies alike. So Southern California, kids hanging around at recess, feasting on pomegranates, taking the riches for granted.
Back home in L.A., where our weather had suddenly turned as brisk as Santa Cruz’s, I unpacked, all the while haunted by the scent of spiced persimmons baking. It wasn’t a child’s cookies I longed for but my grown-up rummy persimmon cake (inspired by James Beard’s persimmon bread, the recipe has evolved over the years). I was seized with the need to warm chilly days and chillier evenings with the pleasures and comforts of autumn’s harvest from my oven.
I called my mother, inviting her to go with me to the farmers market, telling her what I had in mind. I smiled when she told me she didn’t find baking a comfort. A challenge, yes. Involving, yes. But not a comfort. For my part, when I’m at sixes and sevens--even when I’m not--I find myself in the kitchen whisking up coffeecake or patting out shortbread. I find baking’s rituals--the sifting, kneading, rolling, pinching, smearing, melting, folding--pleasurable. And when something’s pleasurable, it gives me comfort deep down. Although I think it unlikely, I hope Ma will feel what I feel about baking one day.
I set off. I was thrilled by what I found at the farmers market. At a time when strawberries and even peaches are boring with their year-aroundness, spying rose-scented quinces, ruby pomegranates, neon persimmons, jewels of cranberries and elegant Seckel pears after most of a year without them is bliss. And apples! Not just Arkansas Blacks and Newtown Pippins (beloved by Jefferson and Franklin, called Pippins these days) but varieties such as Ginger Gold and Sierra Beauty that I’d somehow never seen.
Fruits aren’t all of autumn’s sweetness. Hazelnuts are among the nuts that tumble from trees in cool weather. I find their unique flavor makes pastry taste European. Got some of those too.
Over the days that followed, I indulged in a blither of baking. I basted three-fruited dumplings with caramel syrup, drizzled a rummy mountain of persimmon cake with rummy orange icing, heaped hazelnut meringue over raspberry jam over chocolate-hazelnut cookie dough, confected a tart of diminutive pears set in almond custard and glazed them with fresh pomegranate jelly.
Burrowing into my cozy kitchen, I reflected. Each season blesses us afresh. Autumn’s blessings seemed to mantle me in layers. First, the beauty of the fruits. Next, the comforts of baking. Ah, then the pleasures of tasting. Crowning all, of course, the joys of sharing. An abundance for gratitude, indeed.
Crisp sweet pastry
Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a mixing bowl.
Cut the butter in quarters lengthwise, then slice it into the bowl in 1/4-inch-thick chips. Toss the chips until separated and coated with flour.
With your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour until the mixture has the texture of coarse meal. Keep your hands above the mixture while you’re working to prevent the butter from melting (your palms are warmer than your fingers) and to keep the dough airy and light.
Beat the whipping cream and yolk together, make a well in the flour and pour in the cream mixture. Blend the liquid into the flour with your fingertips until the dough sticks together; it will be very wet. Turn onto a floured board and pat into a round.
Now the fraisage--the smearing that brings the dough together better. With the heel of your hand, smear walnut-sized pieces of dough across the work surface for 6 or so inches. Scrape up the heap, press all of the pieces together and pat them into an even 1/2-inch thick round. You can wrap the dough in foil and refrigerate it for a day or two, or proceed at once. (If you’re chilling the dough, bring it back to room temperature before beginning the next step.)
Sprinkle a pastry board or work surface with flour. Roll the dough out to an even 11-inch round, rolling in one direction, then lifting the pin and giving the dough a quarter turn as needed to make a circle (never roll back and forth). Fold the dough in half, brush off any flour, then lift it up and brush off the flour beneath. The dough will be very tender; handle it very gently. If it keeps breaking, knead flour a tablespoon at a time into the dough so that it remains tender but can be lifted up without breaking.
Center the folded round above a 9 3/8-or 9 1/2-inch two-piece tart pan or a tart ring set on a rimless baking sheet. Unfold the dough and, without stretching, let it fall into place in the ring. Coax it down to fit snugly against the corners. Smooth out any air bubbles.
Fold the sides down to touch the bottom. Cut off any excess dough even with the rim. Press all around the sides with a fingertip, simultaneously sealing and fluting and making the sides 3/4-inch high.
Cover the shell and refrigerate from 1 hour to 1 day.
The shell for this tart will be fully baked. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Lay a square of parchment or wax paper in the shell and fill with 3 cups pie weights (dried beans are good). Weights keep the dough from bubbling up. Gently press the weights down into the corners and up against the sides over the rim. Bake the shell until the rim is golden, 25 minutes.
Lift out the paper and weights and return the shell to the oven. Bake until the bottom is lightly golden, about 12 to 15 minutes--check every 2 to 3 minutes and prick with a fork if the pastry bubbles up. Remove from the oven. Cool a shell in a two-piece tart pan in the pan; a shell baked in a ring can be slid off the pan onto a cooling rack. Unmold the shell. If it is in a two-piece pan, set it on a sturdy can and let the rim drop down. Use a spatula to gently nudge the shell off its base and center it on a platter. If using a tart ring, slide the shell off the cooling rack onto the platter and lift off the ring.
The shell can be baked up to 3 days in advance and kept in a cool dry place, not the refrigerator.
Pomegranate jelly glaze
Cut the pomegranates in half between blossom and stem ends. Ream them on a juicer, then gather the spent seeds into a damp cloth and squeeze out every drop of juice. Strain and measure 1 cup.
Follow the manufacturer’s directions on the pectin box to make elderberry jelly, using the 1 cup pomegranate juice, the lemon juice and sugar.
After skimming off the foam, use the jelly immediately or pour it into a clean hot glass storage jar, cover and refrigerate up to 2 weeks. Makes 1 2/3 cups.
Frangipane cream filling
Shake the sugar, flour and cornstarch together through a sieve into a mixing bowl. Add the egg and whisk until thick and smooth, about 1 minute.
Bring the milk to a boil in a small saucepan. Slowly whisk 1/3 of the milk into the egg mixture, then whisk the egg mixture back into the pot. Whisk over medium heat until the custard begins to bubble, then whisk for 1 minute.
Remove from the heat, pour through a sieve into a bowl, whisk in the almond extract, then blend in the almonds. Lay wax paper on the surface of the cream to prevent a skin from forming. Cool before adding to the tart shell, or cover and refrigerate up to 2 days.
If the Pomegranate Jelly has set, melt it in a saucepan over low heat, whisking to break up lumps. Pour 1/3 cup into the shell and brush it over the bottom and up the sides for a moisture barrier.
When this jelly has set, smooth the Frangipane Cream into the shell.
Poached pears
Add enough water to the sugar to make 1 quart, stirring until the sugar dissolves, then pour the syrup into a 3-to 3 1/2-quart saucepan.
Peel the pears and cut in half lengthwise. With a small sharp knife, make a V-cut to trim out the cores. Drop the halves into the syrup as you go.
Bring the syrup to a boil over high heat, reduce the heat to low and simmer until the pears test tender with a thin skewer, 10 to 20 minutes. Skewer them and lift each out as it is ready.
You can keep the pears in the syrup, covered and refrigerated, up to 3 days. If using right away, cool them before adding to the tart.
Lift the pears from their syrup and pat thoroughly dry. Lay them on the cream layer, starting with a row of rounded bottoms against the sides, thin edges pointing toward the center; finish with a small pear in the center. For help in lifting and moving pears, use a thin skewer.
If the pomegranate jelly has set, melt it over lowest heat, whisking until smooth. Spoon about 1/4 cup over the pears and cream, covering them completely but steering clear of the pastry rim.
Garnish
Toast the almonds in a dry skillet over medium heat until golden, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle the almonds around the outer edge of the tart in a 1 1/2-inch border. Strew pomegranate seeds over the almonds.
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